Today’s book review at CCLaP: “Make It Stay” by Joan Frank, which I calls my favorite read so far of the year. The novel explores the lives of two couples in a small Northern California town as they encounter births, deaths, joys, and frustrations. I assert, “Frank’s highly polished literary prose is definitely worth your time.” Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Make It Stay, by Joan Frank
In Howard Owen’s ninth novel, The Reckoning, the lives of George James and Freeman Hawk meet again after decades of separation. Freeman was an African-American civil rights activist who fled to Canada to avoid getting drafted. George James was a scion of the old money South and an heir to the Old Dominion Ham Company. Owen shifts between past and present, reflecting the tense relationship between George James, widowed and alcoholic, and his son Jake. Freeman Hawk returned to George, but George’s idealization of Freeman makes the opaque circumstances harder to pick up. George tells Jake how Freeman led the … Continue reading The Reckoning by Howard Owen
The Driftless Area Review 